Video: Applying Free Transform to correct perspective

With this photograph, I want to take a look at another technique that we can use in order to correct distortion, and in this technique involves using the Free Transform tool. So here let's go ahead and duplicate our Background copy. We can do so by pressing Command+J on a Mac or Ctrl+J on windows and let's name this layer, corrections. Next, what I want to do is zoom out a little bit, press Command+Minus or Ctrl+Minus to do that and then here let's access Free Transform by way of a shortcut. The shortcut is Command+T on a Mac or Ctrl+T on Windows.

In Photoshop CS6 for Photographers, author, photographer, and teacher Chris Orwig explores Photoshop from the perspective of the photographer.

The course details the features and techniques behind enhancing and retouching photos, preparing them for print and online publishing, and much more. Chris demonstrates how to make basic edits in Camera Raw, develop and save color profiles, work with layers and selections, tone and sharpen, and retouch images while retaining their natural character.

Chris also shares some creative tips and project ideas, such as converting a photo to black-and-white and enhancing a portrait with hand-painted masks. The course also covers workflow details, such as organizing images in Bridge and Mini Bridge, optimizing Photoshop preferences, and calibrating your monitor.

Applying Free Transform to correct perspective

With this photograph, I want to take a look at another technique that we canuse in order to correct distortion, and in this technique involves using theFree Transform tool.So here let's go ahead and duplicate our Background copy.We can do so by pressing Command+J on a Mac or Ctrl+J on windows and let's namethis layer, corrections.Next, what I want to do is zoom out a little bit, press Command+Minus or Ctrl+Minus todo that and then here let's access Free Transform by way of a shortcut.The shortcut is Command+T on a Mac or Ctrl+T on Windows.

If ever you forget the shortcut, just go to the Edit pull-down menu and you canfind Free Transform right here.All right, well, typically when we use Free Transform, we grab one of the corner points.When we grab those corner points, what can happen is we can just change theoverall perspective by doing that.Yet if you hold down a Modifier key and then drag those corner points, you canactually make some perspective adjustments as well.Hold down Command on a Mac, Ctrl on Windows, and then click and drag.And by doing that, by dragging over to the left and up a little bit, you can seethat I can start to straighten out this cross on the left side of the image.

I could also click and drag this one out as well and up a little bit.We could drag that middle point in order to add a little bit more height and nowthis is just a little bit more straight;the correction or the overall perspective is a bit better on this picture.Let's press Enter or Return to apply that.Here we have our before and then our after.The side on the left here or this photograph that I captured down in Mexicolooks good, but the cross on the right, well, it's leaning a little bit over.I want to fix that.In order to fix that, let's make a selection with our Marquee tool.

Here we'll go ahead and click and drag over this cross and then after we'veselected that, we're going to duplicate or jump this content to a new layer.To do that, press Command+J on a Mac, Ctrl+J on Windows.Next, once again, we can re-access Free Transform by going to Edit and choosingFree Transform or by using our shortcut, Command+T or Ctrl+T.Well, here we'regoing to enter the Warp option.We've seen this previously.This gives us these controls which we can then use in order to click and drag tochange the overall perspective.

Here we can either drag these endpoints or we can click and drag the lines.What I'm interested in doing is trying to make this cross a little bit more straight.So I am going to go ahead and click and drag this down, because I want tocorrect the perspective just for this part of the image, the part which we'vecopied to this new layer.And by doing this, it gives us this real specific control about how we can make that happen.Well, I think that's looking a little better.Let's go ahead and then press Enter or Return to apply that and here you can seewe've essentially corrected that side of our image as well and we're able to dothat because we copy this to a new layer.

Now after having done that, you may need to do a little bit of masking to finish this off.So you can click on the icon to add a layer Mask and then grab your Brush tooland then go ahead and paint with black if you want to hide some of this thatyou've brought in here and I am just going to mask off little bit of the area ofthe top of this image.And by doing that, now on this layer, really, I just have this cross and some of the sky.We essentially concealed this part of it and then it's just showing us thiscross sitting on top of that structure here.

So in this case, if you look at our overall before and after, here's beforeand then now here's after, we were able to use Free Transform and also freetransform in combination with Warp in order to make some great perspective changes.And by combining these different techniques together, what you can do isoftentimes come up with some great results by having specific control about howyou correct the perspective in your photographs.

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